Thursday, October 19, 2006

WE HAVE A MORALE PROBLEM!

Maybe we are stating the obvious but what is the root of this problem? We can point at manpower as one of the principle culprits. Just under 10 years ago when I got on this job I worked in a fast south side district. Every beat and rapid was up along with a traffic car, incident car and a wagon. Plenty of bodies in the roll call room.

Today in that same south side district the picture is completely different. The calls for service are just as frequent but the bodies to answer those calls are fewer. Obviously the beat cars are all manned and yes there is a wagon but on any given evening you would be lucky to find three or four rapids and not all are 10-4.

What happened to the manpower? Attrition? About two years ago a story was going around and it went like this....I know this Lt at personnel and he said that only 10,000 duty availability checks went out this quarter. I don’t know if that story was true or not but every time it was repeated to me the storyteller would know the source personally. We were convinced that attrition was far out pacing new hires. However, when I would attended FOP monthly meetings the announced number of current members didn’t seem to support this great dip in manpower.The attrition rate probably was out pacing new hires but not at the clip the “duty availability” story led us to believe.

So what happened to the manpower? Take a look at any district’s A&A sheets and see how many people are detailed out. Not only are they detailed to various units at 35th St but the Area’s are draining people with saturation teams, midnight gang teams and gun teams. One of the biggest drains is TRU and the newest target team is the Targeted Traffic Unit. Jobs that were done at the district level are now being done by deployed units. That leaves district copper with only one job and that is to answer calls. Jobs are stacked two and three deep and lunches get denied on a regular basis. However, the Guys want to make street and traffic stops but, some of our colleagues actually discourage it because of the damn backlog. I have actually heard a fellow sergeant tell a couple of hard charging coppers “you want to chase guys then go to the tact team, but your job is to answer calls” Way to build up that morale sarge!

On another point our guys would like to take a night off once in awhile. Use the hours that they earned working overtime or working on a holiday. Time and time again I’m handing back time due slips at roll call with “DENIED” written across. Manpower demands! The shitty part about these denials is they are given back the night before the requested day off. These people can’t make plans to spend some time with family or friends. Do we have a morale problem? Your damn right we do and manpower is one of the main culprits. We're sure many of you have opinions as to the source of low morale on the department.....please share.

15 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Yes...I remember when a district had more than one wagon-because you NEED an extra wagon when the shit starts brewing on a hot summer nite in Chicago!! I remember foot people who were out there and they would answer up and make theirselves useful. When you are short people everyone suffers!! Heres a suggestion for downtown: Make the ballparks a special employment gig and have POLICE directing traffic and answering questions that are asked by visitors to our great city! PLEASE ASSIGN THOSE TMAs to something other than the sports events... streets and san could probably make better use of them. And let the MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL OWNERS PAY FOR THE POLICE and they will be proud to have POLICE out in front of their stadiums!! Thats all for now!!

The man power shotage is just as bad in the detective division. The bean counters at 35th don't have a clue. They keep demanding more and give the areas less. If you look at the detailed lists from each area, it is ridiculous. Cold case is a joke.Dicks assigned to gang int? why? Any of the FBI task forces? total waste - they don't let the CPD guys do anything.End the details.Promote more often. Do away with the stupid 6 month training rotation and maybe the clearance rates that they keep crying about will improve.

The FOP needs to enforce the contract. And tell the tact guys to go back to the watches. Sounds drastic, I know. But if the city did not have all of these "voluntary deployments" to play around with, they would have to staff all of these bell and whistle units some other way. It breaks my heart to suggest this stuff because I've been a tac guy most of my career. But as long as they have working anything voluntarily, they can pretty much do whatever they want. Just my two cents.

Can you explain how enforcing the contract would include sending tactical officers back to the watch. If I'm not mistaken the positions on the tactical, gang, and downtown foot teams are part of the contract, the union gave that right to the city years ago.

Enforcing the contract would not include sending people back to the watch. I guess the main point I was trying to make was that the city gets around the contract with all of these voluntary assignments. There are districts with tactical teams, gang tactical teams, housing teams and now Robbery-burglary teams all at the same time. That is 50-65 officers per district that are "volunteering" to waive some of the contract's provisions by going up to tac, etc. It's been like this for a long time, I know. But the city seems to be exploiting these officers much more often than in recent years to man DOC areas and violence zones and whatever else the bosses can come up with to cover their asses at these accountability meetings. They refuse to staff the department at an acceptable level. I'm not suggesting management shouldn't have some staffing flexibility built in. But recent developments have gotten ridiculous. Hire more police officers.

Interesting that there are only about 20 spots open for Sergeant's bidding but they have a class of 50+ being promoted. Could it be that they save the "good" spots for the chosen ones in the group. I know that it happens every class, but this is still typical morale killing CPD bullshit.

The list for department awards had 400 plus unit guys with 2 or 3 district guys. What’s up with that? Are you guys to busy to type out an honorable or d/c. I haven't seen an honorable handed out in roll call in months, and its not that the watch is lacking quality arrests. Are you guys to busy?, to lazy?, have no clue how to print one up?, don't think watch personnel deserve them? what is it.Not like the awards mean anything but come on, I know for a fact the tach guys in my district type out their own awards.

I work in a westside district. I wanted to transfer out but when the bid list came out,there was only one opening in the district that I wanted to go to. Guess what happened when the new class of Sgts. graduated? You got it, 5 new Sgts. went where I was told there was only one opening. Not fair. And WHY, do I have to work 1st. watch in my new district that I am trying to get to? I've got over 25 years on the job but EVERY single D/C that I interviewed with told me that I'd have to work 1st watch while the newly promoted get assigned to 2nd or 3rd! Am I on probation? The union needs to look at this. Incumbent Sgts. should be allowed to bid to another district of thier choosing PRIOR to the new Sgts. being assigned. Why do I have to work in a shithole while some new Sgt. gets to go to a nice district?

Interesting that there are only about 20 spots open for Sergeant's bidding but they have a class of 50+ being promoted. Could it be that they save the "good" spots for the chosen ones in the group. I know that it happens every class, but this is still typical morale killing CPD bullshit.

Just out of curiosity, it this group of 50 was clout heavy, why did they have to wait almost 5 years to get made?

TRU is one reason the districts are short manpower. Look at your district's manpower roster, where I work there are over 100 PO's detailed out to various units. Years ago tact guys were put on the watches to man the cars, that does'nt happen any more.

As far as awards go I put my guys in for every thing I can, but the man power shortage also effects Sgts too. When I'm coding 10 jobs a day, doing my log, CR investgations, and court deviations it is difficult to find time. But there is no excuse, at least I will try to do a better job.